Concern grows that regimes' overthrow could hurt U.S.

By Stewart M. Powell

Updated 12:23 am, Thursday, September 13, 2012

WASHINGTON — Mob attacks that killed the U.S. ambassador and three employees in Libya and breached the U.S. Embassy compound in Cairo on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks are stirring concerns that the pro-democracy Arab Spring could backfire on the United States.

The armed raid on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and the anti-American riot in Cairo underscored the unpredictable nature of transitions from decades-long dictatorships to unruly democratic movements that include anti-American Islamic radicals, according to independent experts.

The popular uprisings known as “Arab Spring” have toppled the leaders of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen in the past 22 months.

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Civilians also have rebelled in Bahrain and Syria, and large-scale protests have occurred in six other nations from Morocco on the Atlantic to Kuwait on the Persian Gulf.

The United States played a behind-the-scenes role in the power transfers in Libya and Egypt, with U.S. warplanes helping rebels overthrow Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi, and U.S. diplomats helping expedite the departure of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak.

But the stability of those authoritarian regimes has been replaced by tumult and an uncertain future that U.S. policymakers are scrambling to come to grips with.

Tuesday's attacks, incited in part by a controversial American-made film denigrating Islam's Prophet Muhammad, dashed any prospect for U.S.-orchestrated humanitarian intervention in Syria, experts said.

The attacks also imperiled Obama administration efforts to provide $1 billion in taxpayer-backed debt relief to Egypt to bolster the country's troubled economy.

The Benghazi attackers killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith and two other diplomatic personnel whose names were withheld pending notification of their families.

“The Arab spring has turned into an Arab winter,” said Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee's panel on oversight and investigations. “Americans remain in the crosshairs of terrorist regimes and others who prefer aggression over tolerance.”

The Libyan and Egyptian people “should remember that Americans helped them throw off the chains of despotism during the ‘Arab Spring' and their governments should remind them of that,” said Rep. Pete Olson, R-Sugar Land.

“We have just seen a tipping point,” Rubin said. “We are between a rock and a hard place. Do we continue giving money to Libya and Egypt after helping their move toward democracy, or do we cut them off in response to these attacks?”

Other analysts took a longer viewpoint and suggested this is a phase that will pass.

“There should be no retreat, no spontaneous fear,” said Ed Husain, a Middle East scholar at the Council Foreign Relations in New York. “The Arab Spring is still in motion — it is not over. ... Time will tell where it leads.”

Isobel Coleman, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of “Paradise Beneath Her Feet: How Women are Transforming the Middle East,” said: “What you're seeing in some places it's two steps forward and in some other places it's a couple of steps back.”

The attacks were carried out by “extremely conservative Islamic factions that are not happy with the direction of change in their countries. They're trying to gain the attention of the public in their countries by using America as a political football — and the film made a perfect gift for doing that.”